


Sobytie Bytiia

by englishable



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 07:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4129890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is raised to understand that her body is not precisely her own; she controls the physics and mechanics of it, yes, but what she does with it has always been somebody else’s decision. He probably understands that, to some degree or another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sobytie Bytiia

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a Russian phrase which translates roughly to “event of being,” one that takes place somewhere between the ideal and the physical world. It can also mean “being with,” indicating an event that is shared. Whew.

…

Her first time is with a man they have chosen for her.

But, well, what else? It would not do for a girl to squirm or cry or bleed while on a mission, while it matters, while there are things at stake besides personal pride and feeling, which does not matter in the least.

(Unless that squirming-crying act is what a situation requires, naturally. Then suddenly your gun is between his eyes, your knife is at his throat – and then,  _milaya_ , you can teach him a thing or two about blood.)

“All conflict is a question of simple physics, you know,” Madame B. explains beforehand, as she combs and plaits Natalia’s hair. “For example – there will come times when you must go straight through your enemy, because that way is most direct. Other times you must go around him, because that way is most prudent. This, however, may allow you do both at once.”

(No explanation is needed as to what  _‘this’_  refers. Like anything else which might otherwise acknowledge her possession of a body, her possession of an interior space, it is spoken of only by pronominal omission.) 

She sits before a lady’s dressing table mirror, its dark frame carved into a festoon of roses. Natalia watches the long red braid be tied off at its end by an elastic. It is vulgar to get hair in your face or mouth during such times, she knows, and foolish to let it be used –  or to use it – as a plaything. 

(Unless, reads the constant footnote, that is what a situation requires.) 

“A body need not be broken in order to break,” Madame B. finishes. Perfume is sprayed next onto Natalia’s wrists, orange and jasmine blossom. “Do you understand that?”

Natalia (is she also Natasha, by then?) nods.

So she goes to her task with a sort of parsimonious, tight-lipped compliance, which would in another lifetime have been reserved for dance recitals and school presentations and extended family gatherings. The man – or is he a boy? – is pleasant-looking enough, in a vacant, white-gold way, with wide shoulders and a slender waist. His silhouette reminds her of a coffin. 

And it is a rote, mostly anthropological exercise, but it is not as humiliating or painful as other the girls have teased her it would be. She is careful to touch him as little as possible. They give her a pill afterwards, and a waxy paper cup full of orange juice with which she is expected to swallow it.

The man, or boy, never asks for her name, whatever name she might have given him. 

She never asks for his, either.

…

Therefore it must be excused when, a different lifetime later, she ends up crying after all.

She does it right in the middle of things, too, soundlessly and absurdly, like an older child half-stunned and ashamed by the demonstration of its own grief. He flinches away in an instant, eyes wide, no doubt believing he has done something to hurt her, but her hands remain spread against the solid warmth of his back to hold him in place.

“Natasha?” he asks, hoarsely. “What’s wrong? Do you want to stop?”

She watches the muscles slide in his exposed throat, swallowing whatever he had planned to say next; his graying-dark curls are mussed from the wandering gesture of her hands; the crook of his neck is damp where her face has been pressed against it.

“No, no. I’m, uh.” She tries to laugh. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter.”

Because who is she, really, to tell him any more about a past in which choice has played no speaking role? He knows all that. There is no enemy for him to go through, or around; they occupy the same physical space simultaneously, a contradiction of the quantum mechanical principles that keep else everything in order. 

(It had taken two tries for him to unbutton his shirt, Natasha recalls, his hands had begun trembling so much. On the third try she had reached out and helped him.)

And maybe this, in turn, is why he does not need to ask her again –  why instead he brings one of those same hands closer, turns the palm up as he has done many times before in one shape or another, and dries her face with the backs of his fingers.

“It’s all right,” Bruce says. “Of course it does.”

…


End file.
